I'm not surprised to see Dragon Age II. I don't see why I would give you flak for an entirely personal list, either. I think people were mad not because you gave DA2 a good score, but because your review omitted obvious, objective flaws such as bugs and map recycling. It was a bad review, DA2 wasn't a bad game (though it was certainly nothing compared to Origins).

Woem:The description of the video reads "Greg Tito shares his Top 5 Favorite Games of 2010" instead of 2011.

This is the only instance where the "first!" comment would be entirely appropriate. How did that even happen? This site is has been having serious maintenance issues over the past six months.

OT: Until I saw there was a second page, I thought that his third game was his number one. I was about to rage, "Bullshit!" until I discovered my mental cramp. As we all know, Greg Tito sweats this game like none other.

I also liked Dragon Age 2. Its a Bioware RPG and that means, to me anyway, that the game should focus around the story and character, which it did. I was engaged by the characters and loved the way it picked off from the Awakening Expansion. It seems to me the game had a few flaws that some and suddenly due to these flaws and some disappointing changes a good game that may not quite live up to its fantastic predecessor was suddenly the worst game ever made. I think a similar thing happend to the Simpsons so I was happy to see Movie-Bob's two parter. Good on you Greg Tito, voice your positive opinion on a game even if it is unpopular.

*claps* Glad to see another person who doesn't go with the mob and try to lynch DA2 at every opportunity.

Sure the game had its flaws (alot of them), but it was far from being the terrible game that alot of people say it is at seemingly every chance that they can get. I liked the game enough to play it twice, which is more than I can say for many. Obnoxious little shits they be. :o

Pandabearparade:I'm not surprised to see Dragon Age II. I don't see why I would give you flak for an entirely personal list, either. I think people were mad not because you gave DA2 a good score, but because your review omitted obvious, objective flaws such as bugs and map recycling. It was a bad review, DA2 wasn't a bad game (though it was certainly nothing compared to Origins).

I think you're partially correct. Yes, the game had many, many flaws that were unmentioned in the review. Which I'm fairly sure included the "pinnacle of RPGs" tagline. However, these flaws are important in that they really, really discount DA2 from being a good game. Of all the things released this year, it's not even in the top 15.

Came in here just to voice my props at the Dragon Age II love. It's a flawed game, but I loved it nonetheless. One of my favorites of the year (Although, I didn't play many of this year's games, so that statement is worthless).

Bonecrusherr:It is interesting some people heavily protect DA2 in topics. It is as absurd as mocking the game to the end in.

OK it was not 0/10 game, but it was not a good game either.Being an AAA shouldn't be "protection shield" for games, we don't need "with the mob" or some other weird insults.

The game was a year of the game if you played it on the consoles + if it's your first RPG, nothing more.

Criticizing this game doesn't make you "mindless mob", you will just point the obvious.

There were many many flaws in the game, and some problematic game design choices.

Thanks for pointing me out like that. It's obvious that you didn't even read my post.

I don't have a problem with people pointing out that DA2 had flaws. It had many of them, and even if I had a relatively good time with the game, it most certainly is not GOTY material.

What I do have a problem with is that it seems like -every- time there is a excuse to bring up DA2 in a thread, people seem to come out of the woodwork to say "DA2 is shit, OMG!" While it is understandable that people have different opinions, after reading seemingly never-ending rants against DA2, it's just really obnoxious now.

In short, I (and likely many others) know that alot of people don't like DA2. We've heard it a billion times. But... can we please just shut the fuck up about it for once and move on?

Find something else to hate on, if you absolutely must hate on something. It's been nearly 10 months since this damn game came out. Some people just need to give it a rest FFS.

I have to admit, I'm one of those PC players that wrote off DA2 as a poor console port. I played the demo and it felt like too big of a change. I continued to read both the bashing and the high praise of the game and finally picked it up at a discount. I liked DA:O enough that I had to at least give it more of a try than the demo.

I ended up enjoying the game. Yes, there are common complaints about the game that I agree with (and won't list here, this is not the thread for it), but it is definitely a good game for the discounted price. If anyone that loved DA:O was too stubborn to even try DA2 (like me), I suggest that you get it. If you like it, you can still pretend to hate it in the forums. No one will ever know.

Is DA2 on my top 5 for the year? Maybe, but like chaosyoshimage I haven't played that many games this year so that probably doesn't mean much.

As for Skyrim, I still haven't played it. I do want to play it, but launch day reviews (especially for PC) made me hold of on the purchase. (That means that I did have to look up the "arrow to the knee" reference the first time I saw it.) If the game is half as good as most people say, I'm sure I'll like it.

I'm going to try that Pirates of Black Cove game based on this recommendation. I've been waiting for a good successor to Sid Meier's Pirates! for a while and I hope this fills that hole in my hearrrrrrrt.

DVS BSTrD:Okay this is just sad. How did Daystar and Woem manage to comment an hour before the OP even posted? Seriously escapist, it's like you don't even care anymore.

It's actually a glitch that's been around for ages that no one appears to have noticed. Sometimes, the Staff preloads the article/video/whatever and it pops up in the "Latest Posts" box. People click it, post and boom, you get what you see here, two posts before the OP. It happens rarely[1] but it's there.

OT: Interesting list, now to watch as the DA2 review fiasco raises its head yet again as people can't seem to let it go.

I would easily put DA2 on my Best of 2011 list too. Yes it had flaws, but most of the acual complaints about it really just boil down to "It's not DA:O 1.5." Immensely enjoyable on almost every level and one of teh very few games I was eager to start a second time the moment I finished my first play.

I don't care either way about Dragon Age 2, I haven't played it and I'm not even slightly interested in it, but I'm glad to see you added Skyrim, seriously, just as you said, it has almost anything I ever wanted from a videogame. It has it's flaws and it's not perfect, but it's been a long while since the last time I throughfully enjoyed a single player RPG since... well, since New Vegas. I'll hunt for some mods later, but right now, I'm enjoying it as it is, I don't mind the muddy textures at all, also because my PC isn't capable of anything better at the moment.

I know I'm going to get flak for this too, but I really don't care at this point. Dragon Age 2 is a fantastic roleplaying game. One of the best games of this year.

Haters just want to hate. Trolls just want to bitch. I could care less about what they think. I won't tell you how much though... EDIT: Not all people are like that, it's okay to not like the game. But it seemed to me some people were really pissy about it. Way too pissy.

Thanks Greg. I'm glad you aren't afraid of the people who can't play a great game without comparing it to a previous title. These so called 'gamers' put too much into what a game is called instead of playing each title for it's worth. The fact that some say the game would be fine if it was called something other than Dragon Age tells it all.

Sober Thal:I know I'm going to get flak for this too, but I really don't care at this point. Dragon Age 2 is a fantastic roleplaying game. One of the best games of this year.

Haters just want to hate. Trolls just want to bitch. I could care less about what they think. I won't tell you how much though...

Thanks Greg. I'm glad you aren't afraid of the people who can't play a great game without comparing it to a previous title. These so called 'gamers' put too much into what a game is called instead of playing each title for it's worth. The fact that they say the game would be fine if it was called something other than Dragon Age tells it all.

Cheers!

Edit: *Looks at above post*... awesome!

Whoa, why resort to name-calling? Is it so unimaginable that people who didn't like the game aren't "haters" or "trolls" that get nourishment from other people's misery?

I really enjoyed DA2, but in the inevitable comparison to other BioWare games, it's a rush-job. It's not something most people can just ignore and "enjoy the game" at full cost. And it's also purely the publisher's fault, I think, since they barely gave BioWare a year to finalize it. In one year, we could have gotten shit-on-a-stick from most developers, but we got DA2 from BioWare. I consider that a success! And bless the people that managed to immerse themselves and enjoy it for the story; I liked it too, but the whole ordeal left me with a bad aftertaste.

Regarding the list, that pirate game looks awesome. Especially the sailing ships firing guided missiles - goddammit, that would have been useful on the high seas of the era.

Sober Thal:I know I'm going to get flak for this too, but I really don't care at this point. Dragon Age 2 is a fantastic roleplaying game. One of the best games of this year.

Haters just want to hate. Trolls just want to bitch. I could care less about what they think. I won't tell you how much though...

Thanks Greg. I'm glad you aren't afraid of the people who can't play a great game without comparing it to a previous title. These so called 'gamers' put too much into what a game is called instead of playing each title for it's worth. The fact that they say the game would be fine if it was called something other than Dragon Age tells it all.

Cheers!

Edit: *Looks at above post*... awesome!

Whoa, why resort to name-calling? Is it so unimaginable that people who didn't like the game aren't "haters" or "trolls" that get nourishment from other people's misery?

I really enjoyed DA2, but in the inevitable comparison to other BioWare games, it's a rush-job. It's not something most people can just ignore and "enjoy the game" at full cost. And it's also purely the publisher's fault, I think, since they barely gave BioWare a year to finalize it. In one year, we could have gotten shit-on-a-stick from most developers, but we got DA2 from BioWare. I consider that a success! And bless the people that managed to immerse themselves and enjoy it for the story; I liked it too, but the whole ordeal left me with a bad aftertaste.

Regarding the list, that pirate game looks awesome. Especially the sailing ships firing guided missiles - goddammit, that would have been useful on the high seas of the era.

Not liking the game is fine, same for being disappointed, wanted it to be more like the first ect...

I should have been more clear, but I was referring to the people who acted like the game punched their Mother and stole their car. People that trolled Bioware about it, ect...

that by the dramatic climax I was making decisions not for any gamist goal of stats or quest completion but because I genuinely cared for the characters' well-being.

This is the problem with Dragon Age 2 in a nutshell. It doesn't work as a game, so people defend it as an interactive narrative with a "flawed" game attached. The problem with that defense is that it isn't a very good narrative, either - it doesn't incorporate the interactivity component well, but at the same time it can't hold a candle to most linear narratives, either.

Great picks, Dragon Age 2 was a great game, it might actually be my #1 game out of this year. It is tied for that position with Skyrim.

Bonecrusherr:It is interesting some people heavily protect DA2 in topics. It is as absurd as mocking the game to the end in.

OK it was not 0/10 game, but it was not a good game either.Being an AAA shouldn't be "protection shield" for games, we don't need "with the mob" or some other weird insults.

The game was a year of the game if you played it on the consoles + if it's your first RPG, nothing more.

Criticizing this game doesn't make you "mindless mob", you will just point the obvious.

There were many many flaws in the game, and some problematic game design choices.

I have played many games, many RPGs amongst them, in my 22 years of gaming, and in all seriousness, I gave Dragon Age 2 a 9.5 out of 10.

The only legitimate flaw, that isn't a personal opinion kind of flaw, is the somewhat repeating of dungeons. If I did review games for a living, it would be the only thing I would mention about the game as being a flaw.

I felt it was a vast improvement over Origins. I tried to play Origins all the way through before I moved on to DA2, but I could only stand a little over 20 hours of Origins before I had to move on to DA2 to see if BioWare actually corrected their mistakes and actually made a fun game. Origins was a broken and outdated RPG for when it was made. Heck, going back and playing KotOR, KotOR feels ahead of Origins in many ways. I seriously hope DA2 is what we can expect from RPGs in the RPG sub-set group it is in. Origins gets a 5 out of 10 from me.

And yes, I would consider many of the people that rated Dragon Age 2 a mindless mob. The reason I say this is that I watched the development of Dragon Age 2, I watched all the trailers, all the making of videos and news videos that were out before launch. BioWare flat-out told people that Dragon Age 2 was not going to be like Origins, they said they were changing everything, choices, combat, leveling, dialogue, the personality and makeup of the characters. They said that people would play Hawke and he was human, that it was a more personal and narrow story compared to Origins.

But then when the game was released, an unruly rabble gave the game bad reviews and uncalled for 0 bombs, all under the banner that the game was no DA:Origins and wasn't like Origins, totally changed compared to it. Well, ddduuuhhh, of course it isn't like Origins, BioWare was upfront with everything. Don't go buying a game knowing full well it is going to be different, then bomb it because it is different than the previous game.

They are mindless also in that many did this because they have a mentality that BioWare should only make games in the style they like, and some put on blinders, and even when looking at that there would be major changes, they must have went, "Nanana hmm hmm na, I'm not listening," or some such thing.

I felt the DA2 user review fiasco is a depressing look at how bad humanity can be about trivial things.

I have played many games, many RPGs amongst them, in my 22 years of gaming, and in all seriousness, I gave Dragon Age 2 a 9.5 out of 10.

The only legitimate flaw, that isn't a personal opinion kind of flaw, is the somewhat repeating of dungeons.

...

And yes, I would consider many of the people that rated Dragon Age 2 a mindless mob.

...

They are mindless also in that many did this because they have a mentality that BioWare should only make games in the style they like, and some put on blinders, and even when looking at that there would be major changes, they must have went, "Nanana hmm hmm na, I'm not listening," or some such thing.

I felt the DA2 user review fiasco is a depressing look at how bad humanity can be about trivial things.

I can understand hating the 0's people were giving Dragon Age, we allmost accept it isn't deserving of that and understand that people overreacted as usual.

On the other hand though, there were obviously real problems that some people had with the game, and it seemed you were implying the complaints being subjective made them less credible. All game design is subjective. I might like reused linear areas because it lets me focus on the characters and combat not the level design. I may also like Duke Nukem Forever better than Half Life 2 because physicists are 'gay'. I'd be an idiot but its all subjective.

Good game design just means the game achieves what you wanted it to, generally that the majority of your target audience will buy and enjoy the game.

At least, unlike some games **cough** Call of Duty **cough**, I expect most of the people played DA:2 before reviewing it.

I really can't be arsed going over the same old material again, we all know the arguments and counter arguments by now about DA2. My only point is this; I did not enjoy the game, I expressed this in discussions about the game and unless there is a U-turn in the direction Bioware games are currently progressing I will not be buying another one(Note how I've not said that there should be a change, that's up to Bioware).

I do not think any of this is unreasonable? I certainly don't think I was part of a 'mindless mob' (and yes, I know you didn't say everyone was a part of a 'mob' but I actually think most of the 'haters' aren't as shallow as some people think).